personally i hate the small ones and hope to avoid miami as much as possible. your example of SE-NY, SF-ATL, and BOS-MIA isn't so bad... a gift I would gladly accept with some of the tics I've pulled in games. There I would take SE-NY and SF-ATL... doable in a good variety of ways, a good shot at longest, and good 6's available.

My worst nightmare would be a low/east split like DEN-ELP, BOS-MIA, and MTL-ATL. I would probably drop BOS-MIA and pull tics on my first turn hoping for a western route to play long through the middle, or get a long east/west and go long through the north first before attempting to link in the smaller routes.

That would be 2p of course... on a multi I might actually take MTL-ATL and BOS-MIAMI and try to build them quick before pulling another set of tics, and trying to get some 6's, probably through the north.

I would take Portland-Nashville and Vancouver-SantaFe .
You always get problems with longest.
Mostly you need Po-Sea somestimes Sea-Van too.
If your opponent plays normal, he/she would beat you
with every combo

Any 15-point or less combination is fine since it gives flexbility of choices, so we have to look for middle/big tickets. Not too big, though. With Goans combination I take Sea-NY and another and know that I might be able to win without longest. I am not afraid to be blocked. Fear is the worst advisor and mostly my opponent has a plan of his own anyway.

I would get more worries from Chi-NO instead of Sea-NY, so Chi-NO, SFr-Atl, and Bos-Mia. I will take the first two, without hope.

This topic was discussed before, btw, but it is never too late to get fresh ideas...

for me the worst combo is them same as the worst one of adriano. vancouver-santa fe, boston-miami and portland-nashville. I've never won with this combo yet.
When I get La-Miami, winnipeg-houston and seattle-new york I would take La-Miami and winnipeg-houston. With a bit luck you can this one win easy.

Tough question. I've had several horrible combos, but I think the worst is:

Bos-Mia, Sf-Atl, Van-Stf... No way to complete any of them without taking short tracks. All are quite big tickets. Against a good player winning with that combo is a miracle, no matter which 2 tickets you choose to keep.

No, with La-miami and winnipeg-houston I would take 6 red, 2 grey, 6 green, 6 black, 3 purple, 5 white/orange, 3 purple, 4 blue and if it's possible also the 6 grey.. I you take 5 white phoe-denver you need 10 green and that's nearly impossible...
but this is only possible if your opponent doesn't take 6 green and that's why I call it luck. you are lucky with these tix if your opponent has some tix in the north or somewhere else where he doesn't block you.
actually I really like the combo sea-ny and winnipeg-little, I always take this one if it's possible. you can go down on the right or left side to little rock, depends on what your opponent does. I prefer going down on the left side..

Those who are arguing that the worst is Sea-NY and two other incompatible 12-pointers are wrong. With a big, generally excellent ticket like Sea-NY, you make that ticket and forget about the other, and you are still at +10 on tix, with a very solid shot to get longest and a lot of 6-ers. Of course, it's better to combine Sea-NY with something else easily makeable (of course Van-Mon or Cal-SLC), or failing that, with a small ticket that's easier to give up (KC-Hou), but even with a 12 point ticket that you have to give up, Sea-NY is not too bad.

Worst is when you DON'T have a good ticket as your core holding. SF-Atl, Dal-NY, Bos-Mia, Van-SF are all big tix that can't easily be ignored, but require playing many small tix to make.

Probably the worst would be something like Van-SF, KC-Hou, Bos-Mia, but perhaps if I thought harder I'd come up with something even worse.

la-mia and win hou is graet!
6 black 6 orange, if someone drops 6 orange than via atl, no question of needing 10 of a colour. when he drops 6 green he always wants to come up and needs red to come up. a winner combi.

bo-mia is the looser:
either 11 black or 7 green and 10 red - drop it and take the longest.

sea- ny for me is horrible, you have to make it and loose the longest in about pitt.

Middle routes can be QUITE nice. Hou-KC not so much. But Dul-Hou, Win-Hou are both pretty solid. They allow you to start up top, grab the oranges and one or two of the other 6-ers. Hopefully you can interfere with your opp's route, AND give you lots of points. Then work your way down and try to get longest in the process. The downside is that the best route typically takes 10 green (Helena-Den, EP-Hou), which is tough to do. But there are multiple alternatives.

In particular, if you get some combination of two decent middle tix (Hou-Dul, Hou-Winn, LR-Winn, Den-EP, EP-Dul), they play together very nicely.

It's difficult to talk entirely in generalities, because any bad ticket can be made better in combination with 1-2 other complimentary tix. That's why the thread started off being about tix that are not complimentary to each other.

That said, looking at things in isolation (i.e. which tix tend to pair poorly with other tix), for US 2 player, I'd rank the worst as roughly:

I realize this a very stale thread, but I think this horror story may top them all. My initial tickets were: Van-SF, KC-Hou, and Dal-NY. I kept Van-SF and KC-Hou with the idea that I would ignore KC-Hou. I realize that's probably no worse a hand than the ones everyone else has described, but there are a couple of twists which elevate this one into its own special category -- including an ironic twist ending almost as good as the one in "The Sixth Sense."

Here's the first twist. Figuring 8 pts in completed tickets wouldn't be enough to win the game, I did something I absolutely never do. I drew tickets on my first turn, figuring maybe I'd get another west coast ticket or two. Instead I got Bos-Mia, Chi-No, and Den-El. How's that for a 6-ticket combination?

I ended up keeping Den-El, since it at least qualified as a west coast route & I figured it would off-set the points I was prepared to lose on KC-Hou. Now here's the ironic ending. My opponent ended up with LA-Chi and LA-NY. I blocked him out of LA and won the game. As I was doing so, he went into a tirade and started cursing at me for being a [bip]. The moral to the story is: if you are somehow fortunate enough to win a game after drawing the 6 worst tickets in the history of TTR, the reward for doing so is to have your opponent curse at you.

Dal-NY and Van-Sfe at first glance look horrible, but you can make it in 9 turns, yes you need a little luck in doing so, and after that you can put a 6 on the 10th and if going first you might get an 11th turn for a 5. Also you have drawing opportunities of Van-Mon, Dul-Elp, Den-Elp or if you go the other way could have den-pit instead of van-mon.

If erps still has his saved games on his site I believe the title was the battle for #1, something like that. It was me vs. womble and the first time I ever got that combo and I had a drawing chance for the win, a much better scenario than I could have expected at first glance at the tix.

I also realize that this is an old thread, but I have had several bad combos before, (van-sfe, bos-mia, chi-no or bos-mia, van-sfe, la-ny or bos-mia, van-sfe, san-atl, etc.) However what makes these and others listed miserable, is when you decide to keep van-sfe as one of your tickets, and possibly give up on the small second, is when your opponent has calg-phx, sea-la, and either port-phx or calg-slc, making it practically impossible to win unless your blocking skills are impeccable.
That being said, any 3 tickets can be a winning combo if you play your opponent and not your tix....meaning if you know that your opponent does not block often and you feel you are fairly strong at blocking, use it to your advantage, or if you know you r opponent always will play for longest, make it more difficult...but when you are dealt crappy tix, change your typical strategy.
That being said as well, everyone knows that I don't always listen to my own advice that I just posted, but I think about my advice and that of others However, with the above comments, I might also have to say the worst combo in many ways can be that of la-mia, sea-ny, and la-ny, especially in playing against top players or those who enjoy blocking. You have no ticket you can forget, and not one of them is easily completed with the first choice, regardless of whichever you choose. That being said, many have put sanf-atl as one of the worst tix as well, but it can be decent if combined with la-mia or some others, but is definitely easy to block.
Thus, my long-winded reply is that regardlessof how bad your 3 tix are, no matter what you are playing your opponent to win, and in order to do that you must out think them...it isn't always due to luck, colors, locos, who is first, tix...even though they all help, if you out play your opponent in some small way, often you can win... even with a horrible starting combo.

P.S. I know I am not the expert, so those of you that disagree, post remarks, suggestions, etc....also, those of you that are new..don't listen to me..as I am not a seasoned veteran like many here on TTR

The tix are far from excellent, and if you can manage to go up from LA to Seattle or Helena, then over to NY, then down to Miami without serious trouble, then your opponent must be sleeping and/or have accidentally drawn not to 44 cards but perhaps to 54 or 64.

That said, the tix are certainly not the worst. A more likely route is LA-Mia-NY with a spur to Tor. You're probably going to lose more often than not to a player of about equal skill level, but you've got a chance, especially if you combine some version of going first, good colors (especially blacks), locos, and/or a bad tix combo for your opponent...

I know this ain't so bad. We already found the worse of the worse. So I think we should concentrate simply bad combinations. I am sure the North American map provides a lot of them. The title of the thread fits that objective well enough.

Kolmo - for an LA-Mia route, the 6 greens aren't all that important. Yes, the best way, if you can do it, is the 3 southern 6ers, plus Hou-NO. But 6 black, 5 yellow, 2 gray, 3 green, 6 red is not much worse.

Again, trying to go LA-(Sea or Helena)-NY-Mia is, IMO, pretty unrealistic. You might pull it off every now and then, but I think it's a lower percentage play than going by the southern route. Funky colors/locos might guide some variation in the route, too.